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Tobacco ban may be hazardous to health

Being locked down with a smoker who has run out of smokes could be the way to epic civil disobedience

02 April 2020 - 05:00 Paul Ash

Picture: REUTERS

Instituting and then reversing a ban on tobacco products shows masterful statecraft. Well, it would have if it had been planned, and if the reversal hadn’t been reversed.

Take all these things away from people — their freedom, their income, their alcohol and their cigarettes — then, after a few days, relent and tell them they can have their smokes back.

The smoking population will forevermore be pathetically grateful to the great, magnanimous, benevolent state benefactor. And they won’t mind so much about the other things.

The first question was whether the government, in thinking about repealing the ban, was trying to appease Big Tobacco, in the same way that any sitting US president is pretty much a shill for Big Oil and Big Banks. Probably not.